Optical components have a wide variety of applications and may be used in various laser systems, in medical imaging devices, in gradient index (GRIN) optics, scintillators, and other optical devices. These applications depend on the ability of an optical component to transmit and emit light which relies in part on the microstructure and composition of the optical component. However, methods used to manufacture optical components are limited in their ability to control the 3D composition and/or microstructure of an optical component. Optical components may generally comprise optical ceramics that are polycrystalline materials with many grains or optical crystals.
For example, methods of manufacture of optical ceramics generally comprise isopressing powders to obtain a green body, followed by densification to achieve a highly transparent optical ceramic. Methods of manufacture of optical crystals may include crystal growth methods to form optical crystals followed by doping. Some methods have attempted to use modified crystal growth techniques to obtain axial gradients of dopants in optical crystals. Other methods have joined different ceramic segments to obtain segmented optical ceramics. Yet other methods have used diffusion bonding to obtain segmented gradients of dopants in optical ceramics. Still other methods have used co-sintering to obtain step-wise or segmented gradients of dopants in optical ceramics. However, none of these methods have the ability to obtain desired smoothly varying compositional profiles varying spatially in all the 3D.